Epidemiology is the foundation of public health and is defined as the study of the distribution and determinants: Epidemiology Essay, UCD, Ireland

Epidemiology

What is epidemiology?

• Epidemiology is the foundation of public health and is defined as the study of the “distribution and determinants” of diseases or disorders within groups of people, and the development of knowledge on how to prevent and control them.
• Epidemiological research helps us understand not only who has a disorder or disease but why and how it was brought to this individual or region
• “The study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations, and the application of this study to the prevention and control of health problems”
•  Epidemiologists are concerned not only with death, illness and disability, but also with more positive health states and, most importantly, with the means to improve health. The term “disease” encompasses all unfavorable health changes, including injuries and mental health.

Modern Epidemiology

• Epidemiologists tend to study larger groups and are not focused on the health of individuals (as clinicians would be).
• For example:

1. Determine the prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal injury in Irish health care workers.
2.  Establish the risk factors that lead to increased risk of disease or injury in the population (e.g. exposure to rubber increasing the risk of bladder cancer in the tyre industry workers )
3. Establish which factors support health or protect from accident and injury.

Epidemiology and Occupational Health

“Applied to occupational health, epidemiology has the dual, task of describing the distribution of deaths, accidents, illnesses, and their precursors in the various sections of the occupationally active population and of searching for the determinants of health, injury, and disease in the occupational environment”